Selfish Way to Lose
by Green3
Summary: Future AU. Spike/OCs. Contains m/m slash.


Title: Selfish Way to Lose  
  
Author: Green  
  
Rating: PG13  
  
Warning: m/m slash  
  
Characters: Spike, OCs  
  
Summary: Future AU. Set maybe fifty years after S7. No spoilers other than Spike being all soul-having.   
  
Disclaimer: Not mine  
  
Feedback: beingagreenmother@yahoo.com  
  
A/N: Written for the 2nd Lyric Wheel Challenge. Thank you to Jamwired for the lyrics. Thanks to Beamer, Zyre, Greensilver, and Cerdd Gwen for all the wonderful help.  
  
***  
  
Betta had told him he had words like honey and dreamy, bedroom eyes. Marianne had said she liked the way he smelled like smoke and bourbon, even though she'd never seen him with a cigarette or a drink. Leo told him he moved like a panther around the bedroom.   
  
Betta Washington had been a redheaded little waitress from Biloxi, Mississippi who'd had dreams of a real casino town and a Prince Charming who'd take her there. She'd thought acid washed jeans and blue eye-shadow were the height of fashion and when Spike first met her she had her hair teased up so big she'd rival a Texas girl. But she'd had green eyes and smelled like incense, and he had wanted her close to him. He took her to Vegas, driving at night. They'd slept and made love in five different motel rooms before they reached their destination, and by the time they got there, he'd convinced her to let her hair down straight. She lost the smell of incense somewhere along the way, so he bought some for her when they got settled.  
  
He'd never lied to her and told her he loved her or that he'd stay. He left her two months after he'd found her, with the lease paid up for a year, a nice sized bank account and a kitten she'd named Mirage.  
  
Marianne had been a tiny blonde woman from New Jersey. He'd only been with her for a week when he'd realized he needed to stay away from the blondes. It had been painful at times, waking up next to that slight body and wishing and aching for someone that had been dead for fifty years. He didn't even let himself stick around long enough to set her up right, just left a wad of hundreds on the dresser and hoped it didn't make her feel like a whore.  
  
Spike had spent the next month drowning in booze and fuzzy memories, drifting from bar to club to motel room. He had a one night stand with a big black woman in Newark that left him slightly dazed and a little sore. He'd moved on after that and soon he found himself back in New York.  
  
He got himself a posh one bedroom overlooking the Park and a classic convertible that did *not* remind him of Angel. But he got restless, and bored, and another feeling that someone might call loneliness, if they thought about things like that.   
  
***  
  
The first time they met, Leo was mopping floors and packaging pork chops at his uncle's butcher shop. When Spike got to know him, he learned that it was only the latest in a long line of dead end, low paying jobs. Leo wasn't stupid, but he'd never really found his niche before. He hadn't found anything that made him happy, or gave him any pride in himself.   
  
Leo had a thing for classic Chevrolets, so they talked about cars and debated the age old "Ford vs. Chevy" questions. Spike liked women, and Leo admitted to owning an original lobby poster of Raquel Welch from "One Million Years, BC." Both liked sports, even if Leo came down hard on the side of hockey, and both were a little too knowledgeable about turn-of-the-century pop culture, which lead to long chats about MST3K reruns. Leo hadn't been sure what to think of Spike, at first - but when Spike came into the butcher shop, the conversation just flowed.   
  
When Spike asked him out for a beer the first time, it didn't seem out of the ordinary. After the men shared two pitchers of beer and their woes (Leo gave a history lesson while Spike gave an abbreviated account of only his last 3 years) it seemed perfectly natural for Spike to walk him home with his arm slung around his shoulder possessively.   
  
It became a weekly, then almost nightly thing; the two men would go out for a beer, or to a movie, or even hang out and watch television.   
  
In the end, it was Leo that made the first move.  
  
"Spike, you're my best friend," he'd told him. He had been a picture of wide eyed innocence and naiveté.   
  
Spike had felt a twinge of guilt, but he'd shoved it back. Leo was a grown man who could make his own choices and mistakes. It hadn't mattered to Spike that he'd hadn't even been old enough to drink legally. So he was using him, so what? It was the way of the bloody world and all that rot.   
  
Leo's kiss had been shy and awkward, and he had drawn back quickly, blushing. Spike had just smiled to reassure him, then leaned in and kissed him back, only more thoroughly.  
  
Then he sat the kid down and let him know what was what. He'd told him about vampires, stretching the truths a bit to make himself look a bit better. He'd told him about having a soul, and where he'd gotten it, but not why. He never mentioned Sunnydale. Spike's backstory went a little like this: "I was a bad man, did some bad things. Nobody's fault but my own. Went out, got a soul. Wasn't bad anymore."  
  
Leo had believed every word he'd told him, and he took it all at face value. He was in love.  
  
He'd moved in with Spike two weeks later. Spike called in a favor and got Leo a job working construction for a small company that worked mainly in Manhattan. Leo came home from work every evening with sweat stains on his clothes, sawdust all over him, and a huge smile.   
  
Spike could make love to him for hours, touching, tasting, making him scream. He liked making the boy call his name, liked the way he desperately clutched at him. He mostly liked having a warm body in his bed, cuddled up to him like a puppy.  
  
One night Spike had dozed off a bit, and in that netherworld between dreams and memory he sensed a warm, human male that smelled like sunshine and wood and youth.   
  
"Xander..." he mumbled, snuggling closer. Then he opened his eyes and saw Leo lying peacefully unaware beside him.  
  
That's when he knew it was time to move on.  
  
***  
  
End  
  
*** 


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